Your Responsibilities
Extreme Cases
Serious Anti-social behaviour
Serious Nuisance/Tenancy breaches
General anti-social behaviour
Dealing with Nuisance
Noise Nuisance
Your Responsibilities
As a tenant, you are responsible for the behaviour of everyone who lives in or visits the property.
You, and anyone you are responsible for, must not cause a nuisance, or annoy or disturb any other person in the property, on surrounding land, in shared areas, in the locality or in or around Council offices.
We will take quick and appropriate action to deal with anti-social behaviour in and around the properties we manage.
What is anti-social behaviour?
Anti-social behaviour is behaviour or behaviours likely to cause nuisance, annoyance, alarm, harassment or distress to one or more people not of the same household as the perpetrator.
We have listed some different types of anti-social behaviour, this list isn't exhaustive but will help you identify if you are suffering from anti-social behaviour and what to expect from us.
We take all cases of anti-social behaviour seriously, but some cases need more investigation than others. To manage this we have divided anti-social behaviour into three categories with our response times to you. The response times do not mean we are not taking actions in the meantime.
Extreme Cases - we will respond within 1 working day
- Racial Harrassment
- Hate crimes and incidents (this may include race, disability, religion, sexuality, mental health, gender or age).
- Sexual Harrassment
- Threats of violence
- Actual violence
- Drug production / supply
- Dangerous dogs (including those used for intimidation)
- Criminal damage involving violence
- Arson
Serious Anti-social behaviour - we will respond within 5 working days
- Noise Nuisance
- Drug use or drug smells
- Verbal abuse
- Alchol related nuisance
- Prostitution
- Intimidation
- Criminal Damage to communal areas or property
General Anti-social Behaviour - we will respond within 10 working days
- Access disputes
- Litter, rubbish, refuse disposal and fly tipping
- Nuisance from vehicles such as untaxed vehicles and repairs
- Pet and animal nuisance
- Running a business without permission
- Untidy gardens
- Misuse of communal gardens or communal areas
- Parking disputes where no restrictions are in place
Dealing with Nuisance
What You Can Do
Try talking to them politely and calmly. Explain how the nuisance is affecting you. People often do not realise they are causing a nuisance and are willing to moderate their behaviour.
Keep a record of things when they happen.
Please remember we are unlikely to get involved when a dispute involves two neighbours unless there is a clear breach of the Tenancy Agreement.
Mediation can help you and your neighbour come to an agreement, and is often the best way forward in such cases.
What We Can Do
If you are affected by any of the above or feel harassed or threatened by others, we can help.
Please contact our specialist
Crime and Nuisance Action Team (CANAcT) who will investigate all complaints and work with you and others to gather evidence.
They will then decide on the best course of action to solve the problems you are experiencing, this could be legal action against the tenancy of the perpetrator or be a referral to mediation.
What we can't do?
Complaints about people mowing their lawn, children playing, people walking around are not anti-social behaviour and we won't be able to investigate these. We would consider these lifestyle differences, unless there is evidence of anti-social behaviour which would cause upset to the neighbours such as mowing the lawn after midnight.
We have a mediation service which can help you talk to your neighbours about lifestyle clashes if you feel you can't approach the subject.
Noise Nuisance
If the noise is created by loud music or television, or pubs or clubs this must be reported to our Environmental Health team first. They will tell us about your report. Please visit our
Noise Pollution page for details.
Page last reviewed 24 May 2011
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